Buddhist Love Quotes & Sayings

The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with." — Nhat Hanh

Through your love for each other, through learning the art of making one person happy, you learn to express your love for the whole of humanity and all beings. Please help us develop the curriculum for the Institute for the Happiness of One Person. Don't wait until we open the school. You can begin practicing right away. — Nhat Hanh

When I'm a Buddhist my family hates me. When I'm the Buddha they love me. — Frank Hall

'The Last Airbender' is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie's based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu. — M. Night Shyamalan

I don't care whether you're Baptist, Buddhist, Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, Muslim, or no religion at all. Jesus Christ still loves you. You still matter to God. — Rick Warren

Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What's more, we're encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end. — Sharon Salzberg

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go? — Gautama Buddha

I love a mysterious underground and have exploited this in many of my books: the ice tunnels of Greenland, the volcanic tubes of Iceland, the mysterious passageways beneath an ancient African hillside or a Buddhist monastery in central China. And of course, London's famous tube system, setting for my book LONDON UNDERGROUND. It's a funny sort of fixation, especially given my mother's claustrophobia, which I saw her deal with on many occasions. We once lined up to take a tour into the Lascaux Caverns in France to see the ancient cave paintings. My mother didn't make it past the first quirky turn into the depths, and she sent me on by myself. Given her interest in history and archaeology, which she used as the basis for a series of mysteries she published and which inspired my own writing, it always surprised me she still loved to write about places she could never visit. — Chris Angus

Full of love for all things in the world, practicing virtue, in order to benefit others, this man alone is happy. — Gautama Buddha

Whoever makes love grow boundless, and sets his mind for seeing the end of birth, his fetters are worn thin. If he loves even a single being, Good will follow. But the Noble One with compassionate heart for all mankind, generates abounding good. — Gautama Buddha

I never thought much about God, certainly never wondered whether God was thinking about me, until I fell in love with a Zen Buddhist priest. — Stacey D'Erasmo

The man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my most ungrudging love; and the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me. — Gautama Buddha

Love is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Loves comes on strong, consuming herself unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering love proceeds like a millstone, hard surfaced and straight forward. Having died to self interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing. Love gambles away every gift God bestows. Without cause God gave us Being; without cause give it back again. Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion. Religion seeks grace and favor, but those who gamble these away are God's favorites, for they neither put God to the test nor knock at the door of gain and loss. — Rumi

Buddhist discipline is designed to transmute trishna, or egoic narcissism, into Karuna, Divine Narcissism; that is, to transmute self-love, which excludes love of others, into Self-love, which is love of others. — Ken Wilber

Love makes you wise. Love unites. Pain divides. Hate divides even more. Hate separates and brings us down to a very physical plane. Love elevates us to a plane of spirit. — Frederick Lenz

The motivation of all religious practice is similar: love, sincerity, honesty. The way of life of practically all religious persons is consistent. The teachings of tolerance, love, and compassion are the same. — Dalai Lama

Compassion and love is the source of external and internal peace and is also the root of racial survival. — Dalai Lama

The realms of good fortune and calamity in human life are all made of thoughts and imaginings. Therefore Buddhists say that the burning of desire for gain is itself a pit of fire, while drowning in greedy love is itself a bitter sea. The moment thoughts are pure, fierce flames become a pond; the moment you become aware, the boat has arrived on the further shore. If your thoughts vary at all, your world will immediately differ, so can we not be careful? — Zicheng Hong

Maitri can be translated as "love" or "loving kindness". Some Buddhist teachers prefer "loving kindness" as they find the word "love" too dangerous. But I prefer the word "love". Words sometimes get sick and we have to heal them. We have been using the word "love" to mean appetite or desire, as in "I love hamburgers". We have to use language more carefully. "Love" is a beautiful word; we have to restore its meaning. The word "maitri" has roots in the word mitra which means friend. In Buddhism, the primary meaning of love is friendship. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I know a wise Buddhist monk who, in a speech to his fellow countrymen, once said he'd love to know why someone who boasts that he is the cleverest, the strongest, the bravest or the most gifted man on earth is thought ridiculous and embarrassing, whereas if, instead of 'I', he says, 'we are the most intelligent, the strongest, the bravest and the most gifted people on earth', his fellow countrymen applaud enthusiastically and call him a patriot. For there is nothing patriotic about it. One can be attached to one's own country without needing to insist that the rest of the world's inhabitants are worthless. But as more and more people were taken in by this sort of nonsense, the menace to peace grew greater. — E.H. Gombrich

I never really wanted to have a Guru, I was more interested in Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and had a psychological background in college, but he had so much love. To be with him, there was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. Nothing he taught, philosophy or meditation, are the things I went to India to look for, or was interested in, but he sort of jumped into my heart and then pulled, he pried it open. — Surya Das

True wisdom is being able to say 'it is what it is' with a smile of celebratory wonder on your face. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

All beings tremble before violence. All love life. All fear death. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? — Gautama Buddha

I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later. There is not much hurry. If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to Nirvana. — Dalai Lama

Radiate boundless love towards the entire world - above, below, and across - unhindered, without ill will, without enmity. — Gautama Buddha

I love all religions ... If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there." She upheld that there are many ways to God': "All is God - Buddists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God." — Mother Teresa

My beliefs are that the truth is a truth until you organize it, and then it becomes a lie. I don't think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and peace. What I tell people is don't be Christian, be Christ-like. Don't be Buddhist, be Buddha-like. — Wayne Dyer

Pray Meditate Be aware.Stay awake Bow Practise yoga Feel Chant and sing Breathe and smile Relax.Enjoy.Laugh.Play Create.Envision Let Go/Forgive.Accept Walk.Exercise.Move Work.Serve.Contribute Listen/Learn.Enquire Consider.Reflect Cultivate oneself.Enhance competencies Cultivate contentment Cultivate flexibility Cultivate friendship and collaboration Lighten up Celebrate and appreciate Dream Give thanks Evolve Love Share.Give.Receive Walk softly.Live gently Expand.Radiate.Dissolve Simplify Surrender.Trust Be born anew — Surya Das

Our lives are the best school in the universe because we all have to face happiness and madness — Dalin Shu

Conquer anger by love, evil by good; Conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth. — Gautama Buddha

We will develop love, we will practice it, we will make it both a way and a basis ... — Gautama Buddha

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you - when there's a loss that will alter your life forever - you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you've touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are. — Tara Brach

Every living thing is sacred to me. Compassion and love can heal this world, which is set on fire of violence and hatred. I will teach the world about compassion, and end the suffering by halting these floods of sorrow. Said Prince Siddhartha and began his journey of saving the man kind." , — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

Buddha was not a Buddhist. Jesus was not a Christian. Muhammad was not a Muslim. They were teachers who taught Love ... Love was their religion — Anonymous

Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice DEEP LOOKING directed toward the other person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. That is the message of the Buddha. — Nhat Hanh

Let the disciple cultivate love without measure towards all beings. Let him cultivate towards the whole world, above, below, around, a heart of love unstinted ... For in all the world this state of heart is best. — Gautama Buddha

You have two gardens: your own garden and that of your beloved. First, you have to take care of your own garden and master the art of gardening. In each one of us there are flowers and there is also garbage. The garbage is the anger, fear, discrimination, and jealousy within us. If you water the garbage, you will strengthen the negative seeds. If you water the flowers of compassion, understanding, and love, you will strengthen the positive seeds. What you grow is up to you. — Nhat Hanh

With your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs under control, you can have as much as the richest man and be as peaceful as a Buddhist monk . You can experience inner-happiness and euphoric love. — Maddy Malhotra

Let your love flow outward through the universe, To its height, its depth, its broad extent, A limitless love, without hatred or enmity. Then as you stand or walk, Sit or lie down, As long as you are awake, Strive for this with a one-pointed mind; Your life will bring heaven to earth. — Gautama Buddha

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals. — Gautama Buddha

You are far from the end of your journey. The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart. See how you love. — Gautama Buddha

I want to love all the children of God - Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist - everyone. I want to love gay Christians and straight Christians. — Anne Rice

To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family. — Gautama Buddha

Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion I have forgotten all difference between myself and others — Milarepa

It has been my experience as a teacher over the years and incarnations that what really counts are not techniques. What really counts is spirit, love. What really counts is a sense of propriety and dedication. — Frederick Lenz

The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change. So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding and love. — Jennifer Edwards

International peace means a peace between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations, like the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality. The golden age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian: it is a place where people will love each other; not like the heaven of the Hindu, a place where they will be each other. — G.K. Chesterton

Buddhist writings (including this book) can be likened to a raft. A raft is a very handy thing to carry you across the water, from one shore to another. But once you've reached the other shore, you no longer need the raft. Indeed, if you wish to continue your journey beyond the shore, you must leave the raft behind. Our problem is that we tend to fall in love with the raft. — Steve Hagen

We've made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We've fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We've lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive. The sliver of love's potential that the Greeks separated out as eros is where we load so much of our desire, center so much of our imagination about delight and despair, define so much of our sense of completion. There is the love the Greeks called filia - the love of friendship. There is the love they called agape - love as embodied compassion, expressions of kindness that might be given to a neighbor or a stranger. The Metta of the root Buddhist Pali tongue, "lovingkindness," carries the nuance of benevolent, active interest in others known and unknown, and its cultivation begins with compassion towards oneself. — Krista Tippett

Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child. — Gautama Buddha

I'm helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are "near enemies" to every great virtue - reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can't possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a "pathological empathy" of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can't help but stay present — Krista Tippett

One act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one's time in religious offerings to the gods ... — Gautama Buddha

Let a man avoid evil deeds as a man who loves life avoids poison. — Gautama Buddha

If a person shows anger to you, and you show anger in return, the result is disaster. If you nurse hatred, you will never be happy, even in the lap of luxury. By contrast, if you control your anger and show its opposite - love, compassion, tolerance, and patience - then not only do you remain in peace, but gradually the anger of others also will diminish. — Dalai Lama XIV

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping. — Sharon Salzberg

When I speak about love and compassion, I do so not as a Buddhist, nor as a Tibetan, nor as the Dalai Lama. I do so as one human being speaking with another. I hope that you at this moment will think of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary. If you and I find common ground as human beings, we will communicate on a basic level. — Dalai Lama XIV

Love and serve the world through your work. — Gautama Buddha

If you resort to violent methods because the other side has destroyed your monastery, for example, you then have lost not only your monastery, but also your special Buddhist practices of detachment, love, and compassion. — Dalai Lama

All meditation must begin with arousing deep compassion. Whatever one does must emerge from an attitude of love and benefitting others. — Milarepa

As I cooked in the cauldron of motherhood, the incredible love I felt for my children opened my heart and brought me a much greater understanding of universal love. It made me understand the suffering of the world much more deeply. — Tsultrim Allione

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did. — Pico Iyer

Most people tend to excuse themselves with the opportunities they have in life, with how many years of school they have, with the people around them. And in doing so, they fail in realizing many other things, such as the fact that not many are lucky enough to give birth to a world bestseller on spirituality, wealth and success in life. Yes, your child may be a little reincarnation of an awesome buddhist monk, of an alchemist or a famous knight templar. Why most people can't see these things, and keep looking at the past for answers, is something that still puzzles me. — Robin Sacredfire

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored. — Dalai Lama

From the women in this book, I realized that I had been broken open by becoming a mother, and it was time to build myself back up, and discover the new version of who I was becoming. I think I may be recognizing myself again, if only in short glimpses from a reflection in the glass window. By researching this book, I was inspired by the theory of metta, which is described in some Buddhist circles as mother love. Similar notions of mother love may be found in Christianity, as seen through the stories and sculptures of Mary embracing Jesus. Metta is unlike any other type of love. Because it is metta, it brings out the very best and the very worst in us. Metta is forever - there is no "happily ever after," and there is no finish line. — Christine Woodcock

Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be are expressions of your longing for happiness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Fanaticism is the opposite of love,' I said, recalling one of Khaderbhai's lectures. A wise man once told me - he's a Muslim, by the way - that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. I agree with him, and I feel the same way. I also agree with Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject. — Gregory David Roberts

Even offering three hundred bowls of food three times a day does not match the spiritual merit gained in one moment of love. — Akkineni Nagarjuna

Our enemies provide us with a precious opportunity to practice patience and love. We should have gratitude toward them. — Dalai Lama

Love is a gift of one's inner most soul to another so both can be whole. — Gautama Buddha

We never try to convert those who receive (aid) to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God's presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men - simply better - we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life - his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation. — Mother Teresa

Reincarnation isn't something in which I choose to believe but rather a truth I accept. Most people will never know the meaning of their friendships, passions, choices and even challenges. I embrace them, knowing that there's always a perfect correlation between everything, including between us and the ones that love us and betray us at the end. That's how I know I'm almost never traveling somewhere but returning, or not meeting someone but fixing the past, or facing a challenge but ending a karmic cycle. If I was a Buddhist Monk, a Scottish Doctor, a French Monarch, or a Spanish Templar, none of that really matters, not as much as what I experienced and believed during that time, not as much as what I did ten years ago or what I believed during my childhood, not as much as who I am now and what I can do with my life at present time. — Robin Sacredfire

Human beings have become so afraid of the unknown, themselves, and each other that they deprive themselves of that innate ecstasy and love of life which comes with a human body, mind and spirit, by hiding behind the empty shell of their ego. — Frederick Lenz

Most people think that an enlightened Buddhist Teacher is a fireman; His job is to put the fire out so that you can live in your home safely. But seeker beware! A fully enlightened Buddhist teacher is an arsonist! His job is to set your spirit on fire ... by feeding the flames of your soul with love. — Frederick Lenz

If you think there's an important difference between being a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist, then you're making a division between your heart, what you love with, and the way you act in the world. — Coleman Barks

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable. — Nhat Hanh

Awakening as a moment of now

Awakening as an experience
Awakening as a moment
that is the same - today, yesterday or tomorrow

Awakening of a Hinduist, of a Buddhist, of a Christian
of a believer or a nonbeliever

Awakening that lives within every single cell

Awakening within no qualities
as emptiness of Consciousness
as direct contact
with love and light and life
experienced
with every breath

Awakening as resting within true nature
as acting from the true nature
as Remembering

Awakening as opening
to the possibility of Now — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Love yourself and be awake- Today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, Then teach others, And so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked You must first do a harder thing- Straighten yourself. You are your only master. Who else? Subdue yourself, And discover your master. — Gautama Buddha